Aaron Mackey

Aaron Mackey

Staff Attorney

Aaron works on free speech, privacy, government surveillance and transparency. Before joining EFF in 2015, Aaron was in Washington, D.C. where he worked on speech, privacy, and freedom of information issues at the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press and the Institute for Public Representation at Georgetown Law. Aaron graduated from Berkeley Law in 2012, where he worked for EFF while a student in the Samuelson Law, Technology & Public Policy Clinic. He also holds an LLM from Georgetown Law. Prior to law school, Aaron was a journalist at the Arizona Daily Star in Tucson, Arizona. He received his undergraduate degree in journalism and English from the University of Arizona in 2006, where he met his amazing wife, Ashley. They have two young children.

Deeplinks Posts by Aaron

The Texas Supreme Court upheld protections for anonymous online speakers in a January ruling, albeit in a way that sidestepped thorny legal questions but will likely have the effect of vindicating First Amendment rights going forward. The case, Glassdoor, Inc. v. Andra Group, concerned an effort by...

The public will learn how often federal investigators in Seattle obtain private details about your communications, such as who you called and when, as a result of a petition to unseal those records brought by EFF client The Stranger. Federal prosecutors and the U.S. District Court for...

One of the most important principles underpinning the Internet is that if you say something illegal, you should be held responsible for it—not the owners of the site or service where you said it. That principle has seen many threats this year—not just in federal legislation, but also in...

EFF fought FOSTA in 2018. We fought the bill in Congress and, when the president signed it into law, immediately set our sights on challenging it in court. The Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (FOSTA, H.R. 1865) was ostensibly passed to fight sex...

A lawsuit filed in New York federal court last week against the creator of the “Shitty Media Men” list and its anonymous contributors exemplifies how individuals often misuse the court system to unmask anonymous speakers and chill their speech. That’s why we’re watching this case closely, and we’re...

In the United States, a secret federal surveillance court approves some of the government’s most enormous, opaque spying programs. It is near-impossible for the public to learn details about these programs, but, as it turns out, even the court has trouble, too. According to new opinions obtained by EFF last...

The California Attorney General’s Office Says It’s Finally Taking Database Abuse Seriously In 2017, 22 law enforcement employees across California lost or left their jobs after abusing the computer network that grants police access to criminal histories and drivers' records, according to new data compiled by the California Attorney General’s...

Government searches of cell phones, laptops, and other electronic devices without a warrant when we cross the U.S. border may violate the First and Fourth Amendments, according to a powerful ruling by a federal court last week in a civil rights lawsuit brought by EFF and the ACLU. It...

A decision by the Minnesota Supreme Court on Wednesday will help the public learn more about how law enforcement use of privacy invasive biometric technology. The decision in Webster v. Hennepin County is mostly good news for the requester in the case, who sought the public records as part...

Update: Canadian authorities announced on May 7 that they dropped all charges against the teen they had previously accused of unauthorized use of a computer service for downloading public records from a government website. Canadian authorities should drop charges against a 19-year-old Canadian accused of “unauthorized use...